


Don't Ask About the Blood

by BigGhost



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Henry Clerval POV, Implied Henry/Victor, Implied Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-15 21:03:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8072662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigGhost/pseuds/BigGhost
Summary: Henry loved Victor, and he respected his privacy.  But there was some things he should have asked him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this to help a friend of mine a year or so ago with a project on Frankenstein. I wrote about gay scientists for her.

I find myself on the doorstep of the Frankensteins.  The tall door haunts me, watching my suspended fist that changed its mind when it tried to knock.  I’m not ready yet.   
  


The door swings open and Victor’s beloved Elizabeth is in the doorway.  She’s beautiful in the early morning light, dancing on her perfect features as her pouty lips smile.  She says she heard my hesitation, and a half laugh chokes itself out.  She invites me in and tells me Victor is upstairs.  I smell the tea wafting from the kitchen: black with lemon and honey, Victor’s favorite.

 

The stairs creak as I trudge up to Victor’s room.  He’s stacking clothes and precious nothings in a suitcase.  Despite coming to say my goodbyes, I feel disappointment that Victor hadn’t decided to stay home afterall.  He doesn’t even look at me but years of knowing him tells me that he knows I’m here.  

 

“Victor, I-”

“Hush.  I will not have it.”

I open my mouth, ready to retort, but close it again.

 

He stuffs his belongings into the confines of his brown suitcase and snaps it shut.  “Victor!  The carriage is here!” Elizabeth calls.  He presses his hands against the leather on the case and calls back to her.  He sighs and hangs his head, then pulls his luggage off the bed.  I follow him outside and pray with every step that he’ll change his mind and stay.  But deep in me I know this is his dream and my own hopes are selfish.

 

I help him put his suitcase in the carriage and he gives his lovely Elizabeth a goodbye and a loving kiss on her forehead.  She wishes him a safe trip and warns him not to study too hard, to which he chuckles and makes no promises.  He shakes his father’s hand, to which his father wishes him luck and love.  He comes to me next and I force a smile on my face.  I’m happy and proud; he worked hard for this.  The least I could do is let him finish what he’s started.  He pulls me into a tight hug and I quickly recuperate.  He presses his delicate palm against the back of my head.  “I will write to you.  Every day, every hour even.  If you so desire.”

 

I laugh quietly and press our foreheads together, my eyes slide closed and I revel in this moment, not sure when I will see him again.  “Try to find time to sleep.  I won’t have my letters coming from a man poisoned by exhaustion.”  He smiles and we bid our final goodbyes.  I wait until the carriage is out of sight before I join Elizabeth for some tea.

* * *

The day comes that I arrive at Ingolstadt.  It isn’t hard to find Victor.  He’s built quite a reputation as “the one who asks too many questions” and most questions about his whereabouts are met with, “oh yes,  _ that  _ one.”  He lives in a much smaller quarter now and the stone is almost always wet with rain this season.  Dreary and quiet, but dripping with knowledge where hungry children like Victor gather.

 

I rap on the door and hear some things fall over and a muffled curse before a disheveled friend opens the door.  His hair is longer than he described in his letter, and there’s stains on his clothes.  Behind him I see papers and journals that scatter the floor and a few unlit candles at varying heights on his desk.  All nighters, I presume.  Victor never did have an easy time listening, especially when it concerned his sleep schedule.

 

He takes in my presence before the realization comes across his face.  “Henry!  I thought you wouldn’t be here until...well, what I mean is I’m not…”

 

“Well?  Yes, I can see.  I was hoping to catch you not listening to Elizabeth and me.”

 

He looks like a child that tracked dirt into the house, caught in his misbehaving.  Even so he invites me inside.  He offers me drink, food, even a spot to nap.  Looking around his living quarters, I realize how little he concerns himself with cleaning his space when faced with work.  Instead I insist he take a nap.  He makes a fuss about it but with a stern look and his exhaustion internally convincing him to do it, he relents and retires to his small bedroom.

 

I take the time to clean, knowing that if I don’t, Victor may never see his floors again.  Most of the papers are unfinished theses, notes, and scrapped letters to Elizabeth or me.  All of them go on his desk where an open journal lay.  This must contain his latest obsession.  Most of the words are illegible in a hand that only Victor can read.  But the drawings accompanying it are thorough; body parts and connection points, sketches of a man with beautiful features.  A tall Roman nose and sharp jaw, perfectly curved lips and deep almond eyes.  He looks like he’ll come off of the page at any moment.

 

Finding my invasion of his privacy a bit unfriendly, I quickly tidy up his desk and make my way to his room.  It’s simple and small, with a bed and a storage trunk at the foot, and a single table and candle.  He’s curled up on top of the blankets, already asleep.  I pull up a chair beside his bed and drink in the sight of his person.  He’s red in the cheeks and sweating, shivering despite his layers of clothes.  I take the quilt at the foot of his bed and cover him.  His body quickly wraps itself in it.  I see his hands, and instantly see the weariness in them.  Usually clean and well kept, now chipped and hands hard with calluses; under his nails there are strange red stains, unlike the common black dirt one gathers through work.

 

Part of me wants to prod at him to find out what paperwork he’s been involved with to have such stained hands.  However, the other part tells me that Victor needs my care more than my curiosity.

 

The next few days, Victor is too ill to leave his room.  It seems that he only needed to take a break long enough for his illness to catch up to him.  He is restless, and has horrible night terrors about creatures that threaten him.  The fever is getting to him, I suppose.  A letter to Elizabeth should put her mind at ease that her dear Victor is doing well with the sleep he is finally letting himself receive.  I do not tell her that his sleep is constantly disrupted by terrors of a creature unknown to me, to which all I can do is hold him tight and keep him company until he tires himself out again.

 

Days turned to weeks, but Victor was eventually well enough from his fever to fare on his own.  I’m able to leave him for a short time to go back to Geneva, to my father.  It takes time, patience, and wine, but eventually I convince him to allow me to study alongside dearest Victor.

 

Not long after, I am back in Ingolstadt to study.  Not in the art of science and logic, but rather in the art of Eastern tongue and classic.

 

Victor is distant at first.  He is distracted and I see the fear of something in his eyes.  I wonder what happened in his time here alone.  He stays close to me for some time, though bids me away when he feels a spout of emotion I cannot place.  I miss the way he would tell me everything about his day, his new study, or a new text bound in leather.

* * *

I recognized the strange creature from the drawings in Victor’s journal.  Though mangled, eyes yellow and fearsome, and body stitched together in a rough fashion, the drawing is all that flashes in my mind when I see its face.  Its giant hands snake around my throat and I try to pry it off, but its strength outmatches my own.  I fight and struggle, yet none of it phases the creature that looms above my body.  I feel the tightness in my skull and behind my eyes, and my lungs hurt as they cry out for breath.

 

I feel tired.  I feel the fight in me dissipate and slowly my grip on the monster’s hands loosens.  I think of Victor.  Of his soft features and tousled hair, tender gaze of curiosity and selfish wonder.  I think of his terrified form wracked with fever and fear of childhood monsters.  I think about his journal littered with his thoughts and drawings of my killer.

  
And I think about how I should have asked him about the blood under his fingernails.


End file.
